Dublin: Blair greeted with shoes and eggs

Published: Saturday, September 4, 2010, 17:18 [IST]

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Dublin, Sep 4: As warned and as expected, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair was greeted with shoes and eggs when here arrived here for the first public signing of his fast-selling autobiography, titled 'A Journey'.

Demonstrators gathered in front of the book store, where Blair was set to arrive for his book-signing. They screamed slogans like “blood on his hands" and sent up several projectiles in the air as he got down from his car.

However, Blair was not hit by any of the missiles of public hatred and angst.

As this kind of atmosphere was expected to greet the British leader security was tight at the book-signing. Those who wished to get their copy of the memoir, in which Blair defends his policies during his reign including the 2003 invasion of Iraq, signed needed to surrender their bags and mobile phones.

Earlier in an interview, Blair rubbished claims that invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan had increased Muslim radicalization

Arguing that “the biggest threat in international security is this broader radicalized movement, because I think it is rather similar to revolutionary communism," the ex-prime minister told BBC World Service that even though al-Qaeda-linked extremism was “loosely a global ideological movement, but Iran is a state sponsor of it."